15: Early Stage Analytics and Learning from the Y Combinator Experience with Axel Delafosse from Pool

This week on The Data Stack Show, Kostas and Eric are joined by Axel Delafosse, founder and CEO of Pool, a messaging app designed to help couples spend less time deciding what to do and spend more time together. Axel shares his story of how he went from having his idea being shot down in person by Paul Graham to being accepted for Y Combinator. While Pool is still a young startup, Axel offers wise insight from lessons he’s learned along the way.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

• Pool Messenger, “the ultimate antidote to decision paralysis” (2:50)
• Pitching to Paul Graham and applying to YC (6:17)
• The importance of the co-founder relationship (14:01)
• The YC experience and losing Facebook’s API (17:37)
• Products die, relationships last (22:05)
• Breaking down the data stack (28:50)
• Using data and conversations with users to evaluate the experience (36:12)

The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack. Each week we’ll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data.

RudderStack helps businesses make the most out of their customer data while ensuring data privacy and security. To learn more about RudderStack visit rudderstack.com.

Episode source